It is to the body alone that we should attribute everything that can be observed in us to oppose our reason.

When I consider this carefully, I find not a single property which with certainty separates the waking state from the dream. How can you be certain that your whole life is not a dream?

For I found myself embarrassed with so many doubts and errors that it seemed to me that the effort to instruct myself had no effect other than th eincreasing discovery of my own ignorance

The reading of all good books is like a conversation with the finest minds of past centuries.

The entire method consists in the order and arrangement of the things to which the mind's eye must turn so that we can discover some truth.

What then is the source of my errors? They are owing simply to the fact that, since the will extends further than the intellect, I do not contain the will within the same boundaries; rather, I also extend it to things I do not understand. Because the will is indifferent in regard to such matters, it easily turns away from the true and the good; and in this way I am deceived and I sin.

...it is certain that I am really distinct from my body, and can exist without it.